It Doesn't Pay To Play

Over the past week or so I have been ragging on the lottery here in Brazil as well as people who play. Actually my rants have been about the people who stand in long lines in order to play.

René Senna was one of those people. This 54 year-old farm worker from the little town of Rio Bonito RJ, stood in line back in 2005, wrote down six numbers and won R$56 million reais (about US$25,000,000).

He was overjoyed. He bought the biggest farm in the city (R$9 million), shacked up with a 29 year-old hairdresser and her three kids from two previous marriages and then proceeded to live his life as he had before. Work a little during the day and then visit a local watering hole to drink and talk with his buddies.

Hole is the right word. This place would make Virginia's Tavern (that used to be where White Castle is now on Charlotte Pike) look like the Wild Horse Saloon. Here's a guy worth more than his entire city and he's throwing back cold ones in a dirt road beer joint. Go figure.

Anyway, a couple of weeks ago, he's relaxing, nursing a Kaiser (our version of Old Milwaukee) when a fight breaks out and René ends up dead. No witnesses. No one else injured.

This just days after his young wife, Adriana Almeira, had moved out of their home and he threatened to divorce her. Rumors were also floating around that she was having an affair with one of his six body guards, none of which were around at the time of the shooting.

René's 20 year-old daughter, Renata, has been the most vocal. She has requested a full investigation into her step-mother's love life trying to prove her affair and her motive for murder.

The widow, on the other hand, is demanding that Renata take a DNA test and has stated that René believed that Renata wasn't actually his own flesh and blood but the result of an illicit affair between his first wife and another man.

When the widow was brought in for questioning, a lynch mob surrounded the police station demanding justice for their fallen friend. I guess they were upset that no one was going to be around to pick up future bar tabs.

The crowd was dispersed after officers fired a pistol several times in the air and the sprayed the crowd with pepper spray. Two cars were destroyed in the melee.

OK, so René had a pocketful of cash but not too much sense. I guess money can buy you love and happiness but not brain cells.

I guess I shouldn't have run my mouth

This is me. Its 9:17 am and as you can see, I am not very happy. I have been forced by the powers that be to go to a lottery house. Why?

Because Celesc, our electric company, has nothing better to do than to make us try to figure out each month where we can pay our phone bills.

Normally you pay your bills in a bank. Most of the time you can set them up for automatic deposit. But not in Balneário Camboriú. Each month is a cat and mouse game trying to figure out where you can pay your bill.

Some months you can pay at your bank. Most of the time you can pay at your local grocery store, except for right now, with over a half a million tourists in the city, they've decided that the only place they will allow you to give them money is at a lottery station.

Thankfully I had my Treo in my pocket and was able to take this shot of my view from the end of the line. I counted 17 people ahead of me, all with dreams of hitting the number and making it rich.


To be fair, about half of these people were in the same situation as me. Poor slobs just wanting to make sure their lights stay on, but almost every one took advantage of the situation and decided to play.

Finally, at 9:36 I hold the fruit of my fruitless labor in my hands. My reciept for $277.05 reias (about US$130). The line moved faster than I expected but it was still frustrating.

And I didn't play the lotto. If it had been Powerball I probably would have but the Mega Sena pot is still too small to get me excited enough to play. Plus I keep thinking about that fool and his money thing.

Just to prove a point

This afternoon we had to go to the bank and then pick up a few things downtown. When I saw this, I was thankful that I was carrying my Bushnell Digital Camera with me.

This more than proves my point that these people are addicted to the Lotto. First off it's 3pm on a Monday afternoon and it's about a 100 degrees in the shade, much less standing out in the sun. Second, the drawing isn't until Wednesday night so these people are trying to get an early jump on buying their tickets (don't these people have jobs?)

But most important, someone won last week so the total is only 17 million reias (about $7.5 million US dollars). Now I know that will buy a lot of beans and rice but let's be serious. I ain't standing in that line unless the pot breaks 100 million. And even then I'd only be doing it to make my wife happy.

Can you imagine what would happen if we had Powerball here?

Lotto Mania Brasileira

One thing I have learned since moving to Brazil is that Brazilians love the lottery. Love it may be putting it mild. Obsessed. Yeah that sounds more like it. I mean they like it so much that they had to invent jogo do bicho so that people who could play the lottery not by choosing numbers but by choosing one of 25 different animals.

When we lived up north in Goias, you would see a people standing in line at the licensed lottery houses, called lotericas (the only place where you can legally purchase lottery tickets) waiting to buy their chance at a better future. Sometimes 5 or maybe 10. More than at Charlotte Park Market but really not that many. Some of them weren't even playing the lotto because you can also pay many of your bills there. Occasionally the local governments like to play games with you and make you pay your light or water bill there as well. For only one month. That usually entails an hour or two wait in line -- a pastime that Brazilians seem to love even more than playing the lottery. I'll talk about paying bills in Brazil in another rant soon.
Anyway, after moving even further south to Santa Catarina, we have found that people in this state take the lotto seriously. Very seriously. They have incorporated their two favorite pastimes into an artform. Yesterday the Mega Sena (our version of Powerball) hit 50,000,000 reias (about US$22,000,000). We headed to our local Angeloni Supermarket which also has a lotérica in the store. I was anticipating some serious lines. I wasn't disappointed. Here is the evidence thanks to my Treo. This is the front of the lotérica. You can see about 10 or so in line. Not too unusual.

This is moving around to the front door. It´s Powerball-fever, Brazilian style. No big deal.

Moving around you can see that the line moves out to the front of the store. This is no bigger than your average line at the bank. Still nothing worthy of a post.

Walking out the front door I see the line has snaked out of the building and up the handicap ramp into the store. Now we are talking some serious lottery players. Getting at the end of this line means probably losing your job and needing to hit just to pay rent.

I took this last one from the upper handicap ramp just to show how much the Catarinense (people from Santa Catarina) love to stand in line and believe they are going to win it big.

BTW, somebody in São João da Barra, RJ played 15,17,23,33,39 and 49 and won 52 million reias. Guess he picked the right day to stand in line.